Now things are getting interesting.��
Listed on Nintendos japanese site
IGN eyes on trailer and screens
A lone warrior chopping through an army of robotic warriors with an outsized Cloud Strife-like energy sword. Colossal war machines advancing though a misty canyon, shooting anything that moves. The few remaining human defenders hiding behind simple wooden shields that are no match for high-energy weapons. Welcome to the world of Monado.��
The debut trailer for Monado: Beginning of the World premiered today at E3: 2009, and first impressions for the new Wii RPG are that the beginning is going to be pretty exciting. Things kick off with that canyon-set battle, revealing more and bigger enemies with an interesting steampunk design. Things likely don't end well for our lone warrior, as we soon segue to a young blonde hero discovering that energy sword - now inert - only to see it flash blindingly to life the moment he picks it up. Your standard JRPG Hero's Journey (tm) is definitely in full effect here, with just a dash of King Arthur.��
Gameplay appears to be open-world, where you'll traverse lush jungles, glowing forests, climb sheer walls, and encounter the crumbling remains of a conquered people. It looks nicely textured and details pop, animating at what looks like a smooth 30 fps.��
Players will pick up two partners in their travels, and while combat initially looks turn-based, we saw all three party members attacking simultaneously. Transitions into combat are completely seamless; characters approach enemies, draw weapons, and it's on. One scene showed your team (wielding much smaller edged weaponry) surrounding a lizard-man enemy, who didn't make much of a dent in their lifebars before it was downed. A much larger lizard-man (a good twenty feet tall) and giant mutant crab monster probably fared better.
(back up link - check the japanese site first link in post for proper quality trailer)
Hit the HQ option.
PS: you can do hyperlinks by highlighting the text you want, then pressing the little chain icon on the toolbar above where you type, and inputting the url you want it to link to there.
Thanks for telling me. In IE it does it for me. Since I switched to Opera I was wondering how without having to do it via the HTML
i think these are beautiful.
are all these screens from the intro about the conflict between the two deities?
Sweet, can't wait. Low res textures and crude models galore but it has an undeniable charm with the world design and scale. Looks like the scans.
Yeah the wide shots look great, but close up there is some bad texture work, especially on characters. Wonder why they didn't just do the cinematics like Disaster, using the models and environments but sprucing it up. The scale of everything is incredible for wii.
It looks like the engine was built for scale and everything is meant to be viewed with the camera zoomed out like the E3 2009 video. Then when the camera gets zoomed in, not so hot. Almost Dreamcast like.
From what I played of Crystal Bearers the environments in Xenoblade look several times, maybe more, larger in scale. I think that Xenoblade, close up looks shabby. They should have a different cutscene engine. I don't like when games use FMV or drastically different looking cutscenes from the in game graphics but you can take in game models and environments, direct and animate them a bit better in cutscene form.
The start of that video had me wowed at the vistas and monster animation and then vomiting at the inside of someone's low res house.
Oh, I thought the animation was a joke in Xenoblade btw, look at that horse...thing... It's lol worthy. But it's better in the characters. Though I prefer in-game than CG scenes even if they're in the same overall style, like in Red Steel 2.
Anyway, my guess is they didn't even have money to hire a good CG studio. Doesn't seem like Nintendo funds and backs Monolith Soft games fully, what with this and Disaster, but it's not like sales would justify it.